^{page 451 note 1} Augustine, Saint, De Civitate Dei, XI, 10Google Scholar. My translation is based on the text in De Civitate Dei Libri XI–XXII, vol. 48 of Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout: Typographi Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1955), pp. 330–1.Google Scholar

^{page 452 note 1} Augustine, Saint, De Trinitate, VI, 7, 8Google Scholar. My translation is based on the text in Migne, J.-P. (ed.), Patrologiae Latinae Cursus Completes (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1861), vol. 42, p. 929.Google Scholar

^{page 452 note 2} Anselm, Saint, Proslogion, XVIIIGoogle Scholar. My translation is based on the text in Schmitt, Franciscus Salesius (ed.), S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag [Günther Holzboog], 1968), Tome 1, vol. 1, pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

^{page 453 note 1} Anselm, Saint, Monologion, XVI, in Schmitt, op. cit. p. 30.Google Scholar

^{page 453 note 2} Anselm, Saint, Monologion, XVII, in Schmitt, op. cit. p. 31.Google Scholar

^{page 454 note 1} See Plantinga, Alvin, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), passim but esp. pp. 54, 77–80. Henceforward I shall refer to this work as ‘DGHN?’.Google Scholar

^{page 454 note 2} Anselm, Saint, Proslogion, XVIII, in Schmitt, op. cit. p. 114.Google Scholar

^{page 454 note 3} See Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 38Google Scholar. Henceforward I shall refer to this work as ‘SCG’, and to the Summa Theologiae as ‘ST’. My translations from SCG are based on the Leonine text in S. Thome Aquinatis Summa Contra Gentiles (Turin and Rome: Casa Editrice Marietti, 1946)Google Scholar. For ST I am relying on the Leonine text in Divi Thomae Aquinatis…Summa Theologica (Rome: Typographia Senatus, 1886–1887).Google Scholar

There are occasions when Aquinas says that God is Goodness itself and Existence itself: Est igitur ipsa bonitas, non tantum bonus…Sed Deus est ipsum esse…(SCG, I, 38). I prefer to think of those occasions as lapses. They appear to drop out entirely from ST, which was written after SCG. Plantinga cites a passage from ST, I, 3, 4 which, as translated, gives the appearance of preserving the lapse: ‘Now God, as we have seen, exists. If then he is not himself existence, and thus not by nature existent, he will be a being [existent] only by participation’ (DGHN?, pp. 30–1, emphasis added)Google Scholar. The Leonine text is this: Deus autem est sua essentia, ut ostensum est; si igitur non sit suum esse, erit ens per participationem, et non per essentiam. ‘Sum’ here clearly functions as a possessive pronoun, parallel to the ‘sua’ in ‘sua essentia’. Perhaps Plantinga is relying on the Blackfriars text, which elides, without justification, ‘sua essentia’. A more literal translation is this: ‘But God is his essence, as has been shown; thus if he is not his existence, he will be a being by participation, and not be essence.’ So translated, the passage provides no evidence for the presence of the lapse.

^{page 457 note 1} See Geach's remarks on ‘individualized forms’ in ‘Aquinas’, in Anscombe, G. E. M. and Geach, P. T., Three Philosophers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), pp. 79–81.Google Scholar

^{page 457 note 2} See, e.g., Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Actualism and possible worlds’, Theoria, 42 (1976), 139–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Loux, Michael J. (ed.), The Possible and the Actual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 253–73. See esp. pp. 257–8 in Loux.Google Scholar

^{page 460 note 1} See Mann, William E., ‘The divine attributes’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 12 (1975), pp. 151159, esp. p. 152.Google Scholar

^{page 460 note 2} See Mann, , op. cit., for a discussion of these issues.Google Scholar

^{page 462 note 1} Plantinga, , ‘Actualism and possible worlds’, in Laux, op. cit. pp. 259–60.Google Scholar

^{page 462 note 2} But not necessarily conversely: the predicate synonymy view can allow that there are properties for which no predicate expression exists.

^{page 463 note 1} See, e.g., Quine, Willard Van Orman, ‘Reference and modality’, in his From a Logical Point of View, second edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 150–1, 157.Google Scholar

^{page 463 note 2} A mere recitation of these kinds of result may be enough to dissuade a person from taking the set-extensional view too seriously. But the predicate synonymy view has its own difficulties. Suppose there were two distinct properties which were necessarily coextensive. How could we tell that there were two properties in that case, and not one? It would seem that the only plausible answer the predicate synonymy view can give is that the relevant predicate expressions are nonsynonymous. But that is a peculiar answer. It suggests that the inventory of properties which a thing may have can be determined only, in some cases, by examining the language which we use to describe the thing, rather than the thing itself. If we wish to resist that conclusion, we should be chary about accepting the predicate synonymy view. Again, in the hypothetical case at hand, given that there are two properties, what accounts for their necessary coextensivity without accounting thereby for their identity?

^{page 464 note 1} The views expressed in this paragraph are heavily indebted to the following works: Putnam, Hilary, ‘On properties’, in Rescher, Nicholas et al. (eds.), Essay in Honor of Carl G. Hempel (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1970), pp. 235–54Google Scholar; Armstrong, D. M., Universals and Scientific Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), vol. 2Google Scholar, A Theory of Universals; Shoemaker, Sydney, ‘Causality and properties’, in Inwagen, Peter van (ed.), Time and Cause (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), pp. 109–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kripke, Saul, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). I do not mean to suggest that these philosophers would have nothing to disagree about.Google Scholar

^{page 467 note 1} For all I have said, one rich property might have two or more instances. But there may be good arguments to the contrary. For present purposes I remain agnostic about the status of the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles.

^{page 468 note 1} Ross, James F., Philosophical Theology (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), pp. 55, 62. Henceforward I shall refer to this work as ‘PT’.Google Scholar

^{page 469 note 1} PT, pp. 54–5. One should note, however, that Ross also claims that ‘is omniscient’, even if predicated truly of some being other than God, would not be synonymous with ‘is omniscient’ predicated of God (see esp. p. 60), because the predications would be analogical. I see nothing in Aquinas' doctrine of analogical predication which would imply nonsynonomy in such a case.Google Scholar

^{page 471 note 1} An earlier version of this paper received helpful commentary from Kitcher, Philip, Kornblith, Hilary, Kretzmann, Norman, Plantinga, Alvin, Quinn, Philip and Stump, Eleonore.Google Scholar